ARTICLES/NEWS
Article 1: Invoke the Passion of Your Sales Staff and Drive the Revenues
Article 2: Value of Business Coaching- A Sports Analogy
Invoke the Passion of Your Sales Staff and Drive the Revenues
What are the similarities between the championship sports teams and revenues driving sales teams ?
Passion!!!!!
Sports championships are won by each player who is passionate about the sport he/she plays. They are driven by the passion to win, beat the best and be the best. Secondly, they are coached by the best coaching staff with similar passion. They are all “doers and achievers”. Being average is not acceptable to them.
Similarly, the elite business/sales teams are passionate about selling.
They “enjoy” being with the customers, instead of sitting behind their desks and making proposals.
These are “doers and achievers”.
They collaborate with their customers to find solutions to the customer’s needs.
On the other hand, the average or poor sales team is typically a huge “Quote & Hope” machine. They typically sell looking from outside and offering cheapest price.
In most cases, the sales managers’ response to “quote& hope” team is to send their “key” people to one or more days “standard” seminar- on site or off site. These “trainees” spend the time away from their work, collect a bunch of speakers generic notes and go back to their daily routines, doing what they have been doing. New skills, learnt at the seminar, are not immersed in their work habits, there is no cultural change, and the results remain more or less the same.
The first step to building an elite sales team is to start with the professionals who choose the sales career as a first choice. Hiring the sales professionals with right attitude is the first and foremost challenging task of sales managers. In professions such as sports, acting, and music (to name a few), the most successful people make an early conscious decision about wanting to be in that profession, and they understand what they must do to become the best.
However, business leaders must also realize that the best actor wins an Oscar only when he/she is directed by the top notch director. The best players need best coaches to win the championships.
Investing in your sales team, and providing them the best training ensures championship level performance, and therefore the revenues growth.
A business coach may not have industry specific experience, but he/she will assist in guiding your team to focus on the value based selling. A demonstrated experienced coach will monitor, guide, and invoke passion in your selling process- for long term customers’ loyalty and your business growth. Compared with traditional consultancy and seminar based trainings, business coaching is a living partnership with the sales team, and the sales managers.
Just a like a swimming coach, your team must still perform, but the coach will walk along the pool.
The successful sales strategy comprises of the following key elements:
- Put together a team who wants to be in sales - with passion for selling
- Sales professionals who despise being stuck behind the office desk, and make proposals
- Sales professionals who would rather spend time outside (the office), meeting customers and building relationships
- Invest in your customer relations
- Sales professionals who establish credibility and earn customers confidence
- When the customers have a need, they must “want to call you first!”
- Recommend solutions rather than “selling”
- Encourage your team to focus on understanding the needs of their customers, and collaborate with them to propose solutions.
- Build a reputation of professional and personal integrity
- Personal behavior drives professional integrity
The revenues and earnings growth is driven by the corporate culture that thrives on building customer relations, and partnerships to help their customers grow their business.
Ram Bhatia is a strategic advisor and business coach who works with executives to help them build elite teams- Inspiring Actions and Driving Results. More information about his services can be found at www.benco-us.com
Value of Business Coaching- A Sports Analogy
When evaluating their needs for training & people development, most businesses send their “key” people to one or more days “standard” seminar- on site or off site. These “trainees” spend the time away from their work, collect a bunch of “speaker’generic notes”- and go back to their daily routines, doing what they have been doing.
New skills, learnt at the seminar, are not immersed in their work habits, there is no cultural change, and the results remain more or less the same.
In today’s ever changing and competitive business environment, CEOs and senior executives, however, must look at new ways to foster continuous change in their teams work habits, and foster a cultural change and attitude to be nothing but the best. They must want to build elite teams.
In sports, even after the last win, you must coach, and train your team before the next game.
So, why in business one or two days coaching seminars would help your company reach the business playoffs !!
In sports, if you want to make the playoffs, and win the championships, you must continue to assess and sharpen your skills, learn from the last games, prepare for each game, and work together as a team.
Similarly, to achieve strategic growth goals your must build an elite team, foster a culture of operational excellence.
Under ever increasing pressures to meet the growth and profit targets, your operational and sales managers may be supervising their teams, but perhaps not coaching them. Moreover, your employees may be intimidated to open up to their immediate supervisors and share their thoughts.
CEOs and senior executives must ask themselves this question:
WHO IS COACHING THEIR TEAM?
Business coaching is an investment that they need to understand, how exactly would it benefit their business ?
Be it establishing or improving relationships, improving sales and profits, or developing new markets/clients, a business coach can help build elite teams by continuously assessing and guiding to sharpen the required skills
- Just like a professional sports team, a business coach facilitates changes that are:
- Dramatic
- Sustained
- Builds on experience ( success and failures)
- Helps foster a cultural change, not only at work but in life
- Business coaching is facilitating change or improvements by:
- Not telling people what to do, but coaching to learn from what must be improved
- Developing a plan and vision for success
- Having clear ownership in actions plans and results
- Holding the coachee accountable
- Guiding
Unlike consulting, business coaching makes positive changes much more likely to be permanent. It helps build teams that have the skills and want to win
those (business) championships.
Ram Bhatia is a strategic advisor and business coach who works with executives to help them build elite teams- Inspiring Actions and Driving Results. More information about his services can be found at www.benco-us.com
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